Retailers can utilise sensory stimuli to create an appealing customer environment.
Anybody who’s taken a teen to shop at Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister is well aware of the scents and songs piped in to create an environment conducive to consumption and to help define their brands. Now researchers have teamed up to provide guidance to retailers contemplating similar strategies. There is now quite a large bank of information about the impact of music, scents, and colours on shoppers.
Scientists Holger Roschk, Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro, and Jan Breitsoh, analysed 15,621 shoppers – mostly women – to find that music, scents, and colours all affected shoppers, but in different ways and to different extents.
Roschk and his co-authors found that music was significantly and positively related to pleasure and satisfaction as well as behavioural intentions, but not particularly related to arousal. In contrast, scent affected all the variables, whereas colour – warm versus cool tones – had more of an effect on arousal and satisfaction. Music and scent had stronger effects in service settings than in retail.
The authors suggest that retailers, in considering implementing a sensory environment, be attentive to the subtle effects of the stimuli and not expect immediate returns. Music offers the greatest potential for being tailored to the purchase setting, while scent has the advantage in that pleasant scents may occur naturally (e.g., roasted coffee beans) and can be vented to adjacent store areas. Warm colours are recommended for new product aisles, leveraging their arousal property, while cool colours might work well around complaint-handling areas.
And we as customers? Have a look around you when you are next in a shop, and try to work out if you are being manipulated into handing over your cash. When you hear Neil Diamond songs in supermarkets, it is probably time to flee.